Quiet Reminders
by bluesnyder
Summary: It's easy to lose track of time, especially while trying to stop a hyper-advanced machine race from wiping out all life in the galaxy. ME1 & 2, originally written for Shepard's birthday, April 2013.
1. Chapter 1

Prompt: Originally written for Shepard's birthday, April 2013  
Post date: October 10, 2013

I wish "bromance" was a genre choice.  
First-person narrative, I don't have the heart to rewrite it as third-person. Shepard is not named, but it's relevant that they're a biotic spacer/sole-survivor. This has only been proofread by myself, so apologies for any mistakes. The CDN expert was from September 2010 and can be found on the Mass Effect wiki.

Really tough to think that was already three years ago.

* * *

_The thing that makes you exceptional is inevitably that which must also make you lonely._  
Lorraine Hansberry

_ESD / / 11 APRIL 2183_

Just like the seafarers of ancient Earth, sailors of the stars spend weeks cooped up aboard ships, shuttered by regulations, with no outlet for frustrations from work and no space from each other except for a few bright spots of leave. In the shops, restaurants, and clubs across Alliance space, marines mingle with off-duty guards, H3 rig workers, independent miners celebrating a large haul (or trying to forget exactly how much they lost in their latest expedition), local students trying to dodge studying for exams, and civilian sector office workers winding down after a long shift.

Outside of Alliance space, however, you still find miners and desk jockeys, the difference being which way their amino acids are mirrored. It goes to show how similar to each other the Citadel races are - the instinct to get away from the demands of life and work extended far past species boundaries.

I never really took full advantage of my shore leave, at least when compared to the people I served with. Before '77 I did, of course. But afterward, a sort of dissonance had formed. _Being at a club and having a good time_ had somehow changed to _being at a_ _club realizing I had somehow forgotten how to have a good time _and ending with_ just trying to forget_.

But even before all of that, I had never been the life of any party. I was a military brat – it was hard to learn how to socialize when your classroom was a VI program in your cabin, you had to change friends out every six months, and you actually had to put effort into keeping out of trouble. I had done my fair share of tours of dark clubs and loud parties when I was still young enough to get a kick out of doing something I could pretend was dangerous and irresponsible. But that had grown old fairly quick. It only took a year after I had enlisted for my idea of downtime to turn into catching up on vidcasts and trying exotic local food.

Until I was 23, I had vaguely kept in touch with a friend that had gone to a civilian post-secondary school, and it was strange to see how her life had mirrored mine. After a few semesters (and she could finally legally get into any bar she wanted) the novelty and adventure of the clubs had somehow worn off and she really seemed to take to reading romance novels and learning how to cook instead of going out.

The _Normandy _was docked at the Citadel for inspection and refueling. The engineers who had designed and built the ship were excited to see how everything was functioning beyond remote diagnostics and reports. I couldn't fault them for wanting to do their jobs, even if the additional delay beyond time lost refueling was grating and I was left with the daunting notion of _how to pass the time_.

I had long ago abandoned the enlisted tradition of partying until I was required to return to work. Driven out of the bars by my own disdain, I normally sought refuge in the shopping strips in the Citadel's wards. I knew full well the Alliance crew would assume I had some superior, condescending attitude towards them. Of course they wouldn't think about how I had enlisted without a commission.

Not that it mattered what their opinions of me were. They were enthusiastic to be aboard the _Normandy_, honored to serve with the first human Spectre, and disappointed they had to serve with Lieutenant-Commander Shepard, the only survivor from Akuze, surely their CO was crazy, bringing _aliens_ on board an Alliance ship.

Not that it mattered at all to me.

Even if I wasn't on board the _Normandy_, I wasn't on leave from the mission, or from being a Spectre. But I could at least take some time off from being, as I routinely heard from the media, _Commander Shepard, Hero of Eden Prime, the First Human Spectre_.

It was my name, rank, and position, but it also eerily felt like it all belonged to someone else.

If I hadn't gotten too close to the damn beacon on Eden Prime, perhaps I would be able to leverage that uncanny feeling to carve some space between myself and reality, maybe pretend for a while that it wasn't me. Except that there was an empty, gnawing abyss of the end of a galaxy staring back at me every time I tried to sleep. There wasn't going to be any time away from this mission.

In the crowds on the Citadel, in relatively "plain clothes," I was just an unassuming human. I strolled down the lighted walkways, taking in the sights and sounds of life in the wards. For two days I was allowed to fall back from attention while the Alliance ran diagnostics on the _Normandy_. Exploring the Citadel was as good of a time-waste as any. It wasn't like I had taken any time to be a wide-eyed, slack-jawed human tourist on the Citadel before I was made a Spectre. In Alliance space, I had a feeling of control. But as civilized as the Citadel was, it felt like the edge of the unknown, all part of the thrill and the terror of serving tours in space. The thrill was visiting a prothean metropolis in space, the terror was feeling like an idiot as I tried to find my way around the Citadel with an ex-C-sec officer constantly asking me if I was lost. _Are you lost, Commander? Want to just take the transit, Commander?_

Despite my attempt to remain innocuous, I hadn't abandoned armor entirely for true plain clothes. I didn't even dare to walk around in partial fatigues. Even if I could try and disguise my Spectre status for an afternoon and avoid publicity, I couldn't hide my face and I could never take a break from being wanted _quite_ dead by quite a few pirates and batarian terrorists. The Aldrin Labs armor I was wearing was too massive for me to consider wearing it in a straight firefight. Though the weight of it was no burden, it would a bother if I chose to use my biotics, and with my barriers the extra ablative did more to slow me down than to keep me alive. But in wandering around the Citadel, treading a crowd, or attending formal functions while armed, on-duty, and needing to blend in, the armor was the right balance between keeping nondescript and yet making sure I was intimidating enough to prevent anyone from stepping on my toes.

Civilians sometimes kept several different pairs of shoes or bags for different functions. I had two expensive pairs of personal armor and an arsenal of weapons.

And it was mostly civilians I passed as I strolled through the Citadel, although I did see several off-duty guards in full uniform, C-Sec personnel, and a few people that I assumed were "independent contractors." Life on the Wards was certainly different from the Presidium. I liked how the low lighting contrasted the vibrant life. Songs rose and fells from stores as I walked. More than a few had vocals with such strong synth effects that they were untranslatable. I heard them as they had been recorded.

I had no real destination in mind as I walked. I just wanted to be out in a crowd. A few storefronts and advertisements caught my eye for more than a moment – I saw drab rugs hanging in a store that claimed that they were a true luxury from Kahje and dyed with colors beyond the visible spectrum, asari lingerie mannequins, turian formal-wear rentals, a two-story tank of aquatic wildlife, and what I assumed must have been some sort of elcor spa.

Further in, the lighting changed from chaotic retail warfare to indifferent functionality. That's when I stopped to seriously browse – I took an hour going through stacks of refurbished shield modulators, weapon mod catalogs, and a huge rifle wall showcase turntable attended by a gorgeous asari model. By the end, I was ready for lunch. I decided to press the good fortune of not having my identity discovered and find somewhere to sit down for food.

I had seen a hole-in-the-wall place serving noodles where I had first gotten off the elevator in the wards that I wanted to try, but after seeing the model at the Armali dealer, I was really in the mood to try something asari. I inquired on my omni-tool for the closest place with decent reviews and adjusted my direction accordingly.

I took a different way back toward where I had come in to see a new variety of stores. My hunger keep me focused and forced me not to peruse any distractions. I could sensibly only eat at four or five different meals in two days. Though, with the demands my metabolism, I usually had to order something twice, so if I was really daring, I could theoretically try out eight different restaurants to cover every meal. I doubted my GI track would approve of me being so adventurous, however.

As I tried to catch the signage for my location of interest, I walked past a store with a sign that I could only interpret as a giant efflorescent cupcake, complete with an animation of raining sprinkles. I slowed my pace so I could get a good look inside without looking too interested – the place was bright, the walls were bathed in white and yellow accent lighting, and there was a long counter along the left interior filled with what looked like human desserts. An asari couple sat at a table in the back. A lit banner, floating between the case and the crowed outside, glowed in welcome with the message "_Free Slice of Cake on your ESD Birthday!*"_ Dates for different homeworlds scrolled below.

I stopped, then took a step closer and could make out the fine print – "_ID required. Free date conversion calculations available on our exclusive omni-tool app_."

I looked down, and brought up my own display and calendar:

_ESD / / 11 APRIL 2183 14:56_

Well damn.

The crowed still moved past me, only they had grown quiet while I contemplated the coincidence I was ensnared by.

Humanity's first Spectre was another year older and about to get a well-deserved slice of free cake.


	2. Chapter 2

_There are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents, and only one for birthday presents, you know. _

Lewis Carroll

* * *

Back aboard the vacant, quiet _Normandy_, I changed out of my armor and into my fatigues. My asari dinner had been good, even if I couldn't technically pronounce or understand exactly what I had been eating. I was assured that I wouldn't be killed by it, and even though I had my order doubled, I still wasn't necessarily full. I don't think any active biotic ever really felt _not hungry_. Just a spectrum of hunger, a perpetually pubescent appetite, ranging from _I'm not hungry, but I could eat something_ to _absolute_ _catatonic coma_. My father had a hard enough time making sure I had been getting enough to eat when I was 16 and gaining two inches of height a semester without the additional challenge of feeding a fledgling biotic.

Now I was twenty-eight, _nine_, twenty-_nine_, and still trying to find a way to eat three thousand calories on a rest day. I had mostly just given up on variety in my diet and had given into Alliance issue nutraloaf to keep costs down. But I had noticed that Kaidan had resisted succumbing to my fate and still ate a variety of food, just more of it than the rest of the crew. I admired his tenacity.

I sat down at the table in the mess with my neatly boxed free chocolate cheesecake with _extra sprinkles_, brutally aware of the quiet. My cover was finally blown once I had to present the woman across the counter my ID so she could confirm it really was my ESD birthday. Once she realized that I was indeed _that_ Commander Shepard, she would only let me leave if I accepted an entire cake from her. I didn't put up much of a fight.

I had the cake in front of me. It wouldn't keep very long, and even if I could easily eat the entire thing by myself, it seemed rather selfish.

Maybe I felt uneasy about having an entire cake because I was sitting alone on a practically empty ship. Most of the Alliance engineers that had come on board for service had left at the end of their shift. Even Dr. Chakwas had gone out to the Citadel and, by the fact the lights were dim in the medbay, she wasn't back yet.

But I was no stranger to empty ships. I actually enjoyed the solitude, but in a different way than I enjoyed being on a fully-staffed ship. I liked the feeling of being one of the only people on board, like the ship was _mine_ in the same way a child likes being the only one in their quarters when their parents are away.

Maybe it was the lack of candles that was bothering me. But there were no open flames allowed anywhere near a ship, so unless I wanted to peel off some of the straws from Tali's pre-packaged meals to stuff into the cake for effect, I was just going to have to do without. And messing with a quarian's food induction method was probably a good way to get them killed.

What was Tali doing? She might be down in the drive core still. I wouldn't blame her if she didn't want to leave for the Citadel. After all, she wouldn't be able to get on the Presidium without me, and I didn't think she was about to go wandering the Wards any time soon after nearly being assassinated. Being on the _Normandy_ was dangerous enough, what with me planning to contaminate her supplies with food she shouldn't eat. It was disappointing I couldn't even _share_ part of my cake with her.

Wait.

That was it.

I looked down at my free cake. Somehow, I didn't even feel remotely hungry anymore.

What was the point in having an entire birthday cake without anyone to share it with? Wasn't that the point of recognizing a birthday, to have a celebration? I would have been perfectly content with a single slice. Why did that woman have to insist on giving me an _entire_ cake?

Somewhere on the Citadel, the crew was probably celebrating someone's belated birthday, staking claim to some corner of the bar as their own, raising their glasses in toasts and cheers.

Maybe Joker would want some? Bringing him one would probably make him feel uncomfortable. Maybe I would save him a slice, label it with his name, and stick it in the deep freeze for him to find later.

I remember some of the best advice my mother ever gave me. I had just finished my technical degree and was awarded my commission. My mother told warned me, in a way so vague I couldn't understand what she had been implying, about how there is loneliness in command. But I understood it now. The more people who serve under you, the less there are that serve _with_ you. And the better leader you are, the more pride and relief your subordinates feel when they stand beside you. But once you're the person that they rely on support, you give up that feeling of relief for responsibility, and the privilege of command becomes a lonely burden.

I wish I had understood then what she had been trying to tell me.

I put down my fork and sighed. If I waited another two hours, I'd be hungry enough to just eat the whole damn cake and be done with it.

"Shepard," a familiar turian voice said, distracting me from my thoughts. I could recognize surprise in his higher register. "I thought you left for the Citadel?"

I look over gracelessly to my right. Garrus was walking over to where I was sitting. I hadn't noticed anyone exit the elevator.

"Just for a few hours," I replied, trying to look relaxed in my chair. "Why didn't you leave?"

"I came aboard the _Normandy_ to get _away_ from the Citadel," he replied dryly. I gave him an appraising look that I don't think he noticed. I wondered what was drove him more to join the mission, wanting to make Saren pay for eluding his investigation, or his desire to get away from C-Sec?

"Is everyone else gone?"

"Tali went out earlier with the crew from engineering earlier," he said, motioning over his shoulder.

"That's good that she got off the ship for a while," I said. Garrus pulled out the seat across from me and sat down. "No real point on going on a Pilgrimage just to be stuck on another ship."

"Is Liara still here?" he asked.

I nodded. "She's sleeping. We were going over data before I left."

He nodded, his face shifting into what I assumed was an expression of acquiescence. But his gaze was fixed on my cake. I looked down at it, untouched by any eager fork, and looked back up at him.

"Is that a whole cake?"

"Maybe."

His brows came together. "Why do you have a whole cake?"

"Well, why not? Why don't you?" I retorted, trying to sound playfully offended. He glanced up to see if I was serious or upset. I wasn't, and after a moment he just flared his face at me.

It was so strange how easy it seemed to be to read people that weren't even my species. I remember talking with Lieutenant Alenko before, about the revelation of how 'human' the other species were. I wondered how relatable we were to them and at the same time how inscrutable?

When all humans were earthbound, there were deep separations between cultures. But most had evaporated and reformed as divides between different species once humans had hit the galactic stage. Old Earth conflicts of religion and economy seem petty in comparison to planetary rights and contact wars. And even those divides between organic species seemed just as insignificant after Eden Prime and seeing the destruction of the protheans by synthetics. How it repeated over and over again in my mind. Wandering the Citadel had at least helped for a little while.

I was getting to know and understand all of my crew. But out of everyone I was serving with, even if I had to learn new nuisances and expressions of faces I wasn't biologically or culturally equipped to understand, the non-humans I had brought aboard the _Normandy_ were easier for me to understand than any human. There was a candor I held with the four of them, Wrex, Tali, Liara, and Garrus, that I had found impossible to build with anyone from my own species for years.

Perhaps it was because I held no official rank over them, or perhaps they were forced to be more guarded and friendly aboard an Alliance ship. Maybe they didn't already feel like they had me figured out by my service record. Whatever the reason, even if I got along well with my human crew, there was something so easy about talking with the four of them. Sure, it would be easier for me to offend them on accident, but any offense would come with the kind of forgiveness that was required of comrades from across cultures. The effort made the experience of communication all the more worthwhile. And the more time I spent with them, the more I felt like they were just easy to be around. I was beginning feel like I belonged on my own ship.

I had received plenty of training in linguistics, cross-species communication, culture, and ignoring anthropocentric biases, but most of it had been from a diplomatic and xeno-anthropology angle. I remember there were a few others who failed to see the value in such education and they had been gently released from the ICT program. Learning how to read and interact with humans was important, but out in Alliance space and beyond, being able to communicate with all races without causing a political incident was paramount. Being able to call a batarian pirate on a bluff could mean the difference between diffusing a hostage situation or watching hostages get spaced.

It was always interesting to see the things I learned in training pan out. I studied Garrus, the minor movements of his brow and the sides of his face, the inflections in his voice – all the signs were all there when you knew how to look. Humans used their eyes and their mouths to send sensitive signals. Turians did all the same things humans did; they just did things a little bit differently.

I picked up my fork again and shrugged. "Turians celebrate birthdays too, right?"

Garrus leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms in his lap. "Well, sure. Someone's fifteenth birthday is usually a big deal. But you always have some who aren't into the whole idea of birthdays."

"Same with humans," I said.

"There was always the occasional office party back at C-Sec," he told me. "You humans were usually the ones that insisted on trying to _sing_ about it, though," he said, pointing at me. I laughed.

"Well, according to the solar year back on Earth, today is my birthday," I admitted. "I got the cake free from the Citadel."

"Really?" he asked, sounding surprised. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. "I didn't suspect you as being into this sort of thing."

"I'm not, normally. But why pass up the opportunity for free food? It was just supposed to be a free slice," I said in a hushed voice. "But when I showed my ID, the woman working found out who I was and made me take the whole thing."

"Abusing your Spectre status already, Commander?" he chided. "At least now you have enough to share. I _assume_ you were planning on sharing."

I gave him a wry grin before I realized my mistake and moved to apologize. "Oh! I didn't even think to bring back something you could have."

He held out his hand to stop me from getting upset. "Don't worry, I'm good." He leaned back in his chair and grinned. "You should try it," he said. "Just don't expect me to sing. I'm _really_ over that."

"That's fine," I said, trying not to imagine what a turian would sound like trying to perform a song that even humans could hardly sing correctly. And with only slight trepidation, I tried a bite of my chocolate cheesecake with extra Spectre birthday sprinkles. And even if it meant I was another year older, this birthday had turned out pretty darn good. Although I suspected, as I watched Garrus' amused expression as I made a show of how delicious my cake was, that it was only good because I had someone to share it with.


	3. Chapter 3

_ESD / / 10 OCTOBER 2185 02:12_

_"...we sought refuge in a virtual world free of needless pain and suffering, climate disasters, disease, and many other ills faced by creatures of solid flesh. Some now feel that remaining in this world after the danger had passed was a mistake. We realize that distress can sometimes provide a catalyst for evolution. We miss the turmoil of physical existence."_

I was sitting in my usual spot in the mess. Back in the old days, I liked to sit close to my quarters. But aboard the _SR-2_, my usual spot had shifted to be closer to the medbay. I had abandoned my old one due to the proximity to what was now Operative Lawson's quarters.

It was the perfect time to be on the crew deck – I was off duty from second shift, and the half-staffed third shift had begun about two hours before. When I had first come aboard the SR-2, the Cerberus crew had been operating under a four-shift rotation. I did not like it, so I had it adjusted to the way I preferred. It didn't win me over any fans in the Cerberus crew, and Kelly had supplied me with tons of anecdotal evidence to persuade me to change my mind. And Miranda, of course, disagreed with anything that I wanted that ran counter to the way Cerberus operated. That argument was not the first or the last between Operative Lawson and myself, but it had been one of our more colorful exchanges. And even though Miranda and I had come to a cordial understanding over our differences, the part of the crew deck closer to Dr. Chakwas felt more like "home" than the other. Quiet reminders were lurking everywhere on the _SR-2_, and I couldn't escape them without spacing myself.

If I had wanted to be efficient, I would have been upstairs sleeping, or at least going over inspection summaries or system statuses. But the _SR-2_ was currently on course towards a veritable hive of geth and I had a lot on my mind. Even if I trusted the geth we had discovered on a derelict Reaper, there was still some small doubt that kept me awake, probably stemming from whatever common sense was left over from who I was before I died: the Hero of Eden Prime, the scourge of geth and Cerberus.

Funny how much being dead for two years can change things.

I rubbed the back of my neck and then scrolled through the newest updates the _SR-2_ had received from the last comm update. I was reading, with not a small amount of wariness, an article about a virtual alien intelligence when I noticed the battery doors at the end of the deck open.

I glanced up as my gunnery specialist strolled toward out from the battery. "You're off-shift," I called out as he went around where Sergeant Gardener usually prepared crew meals to the cooler and slid the door open. "What are you still doing awake?"

"I could ask you the same thing," he replied, pulling something out of cold storage. "I was actually on my way to find you and see if you were still up." The cooler door closed automatically with a _hiss_. He placed two containers on the counter and peaked inside. I strained to peer over so I could see what he was doing. I was a little alarmed that one box wasn't dextro color-labeled. I hoped that he wasn't checking to make sure some crew member hadn't accidentally helped themselves to his food, or else we were probably going to wake up to a disaster onboard somewhere. When he glanced back up at me he didn't look concerned, so I went back to my reading. If anyone was going to get themselves killed it was going to be sometime in the next forty-eight hours and by geth, not by food poisoning. Just like old times.

Garrus pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. I looked at him through my display. "Are you hungry?" I asked. We had eaten together only a few hours before.

"Not really," he said, nonchalantly. Something about his tone and the flicker of amusement across his face seemed suspicious. I minimized the display on my omni-tool and folded my arms on the table.

I smirked and nodded my head towards the nondescript containers he had in front of him. "What's in the box?"

"I'll tell you, but first you have to answer three questions."

I was game. "Sure, but you can't ask anything about Sha'ira." Even though it had been over two years and Wrex was no longer on the _Normandy_, Garrus and Tali still carried on the running bet they had made to see who could figure out first whether I had indeed "embraced eternity" with the Citadel Consort.

Garrus laughed, deep, low, and warm, and smiled at me cleverly, the expression all in his eyes. "What's today's Earth standard date?"

I gave him an exaggerated, quizzical look as I opened my omni-tool display back up to search. "It's the 10th of October." _2185_. So much lost time. I forced the thought away as I searched his face to find a clue to if I was close to solving his riddle.

He tapped a finger on the guarded container. "Okay, second question. How long is half of a standard Earth year?"

I mentally figured the answer. "Six months," I said.

"Last question, Shepard. How old are you?"

"I'm twenty-nine," I answered dryly. "Now do I get to find out what's in the box yet?" I was excited, but his expression suddenly fell, and I couldn't understand why.

"What is it?" I asked, cautiously. Without answering, Garrus passed the top box across the table towards me.

"Happy half-birthday, Shepard. You're thirty-one."

Thirty-one. Where the hell had happened to thirty?

And then I remembered – I had been dead. But two years and half years ago, and Garrus and I had been sitting together during the middle of another mission that was going to determine the survival of the entire galaxy, and back then I had the audacity to sit down with a cake. And he remembered.

I couldn't understand how a little kindness could hurt so much.

"Half-birthday?" I said, trying to lighten the mood. "Is celebrating half birthdays a turian thing?"

"No," he said with a dry laugh, the sides of his face flaring and fading. "But you missed your last two real birthdays. And with this mission, I don't know if we're going to get to celebrate the next one."

"That's true," I admitted, reaching out to open the box to see what exactly was inside. I had been dead for two years. Maybe it would be okay for me to pretend I was still twenty-nine?

Carefully, I unsealed the lid and set it on the table and he did the same for his. The contents weren't identical, but in each container was dessert suited for our respective metabolisms. I gave him an incredulous smile.

"You didn't have to do this," I said, freeing myself from the weighty reminder of regret.

"I know," he replied, reaching out to hand me some fighting gear. "But it was a good excuse to celebrate _something_."

I placed my hand on his just for a moment before picking up the utensil he passed to me. "Thank you," I said, failing to fully convey my sincerity. But from the look he gave me, a sort of rigid thoughtfulness, I knew he understood.

"Remember, no singing."

I grinned, and together we both scooped up part of our celebratory dessert. I didn't really think his food looked nearly as appetizing as mine, and turians had such a predatory way of eating that never ceased to amuse me, but sharing the moment was more than enough.

I laughed to myself, a dry, self-indulgent sigh. We were facing down the most horrible and denied truths in the galaxy: the fate of the protheans, the Collectors, and the intractable destruction of the Reapers. And here I was, in the crew deck of an uncanny replica _Normandy_, brought back from the dead, reanimated with Reaper tech by Cerberus engineers. And yet, as terrible as it all was, I was with my best friend in the whole damned galaxy. He was beside me, the specter of loneliness that had haunted my life for so long finally banished. Just a quiet reminder that I wasn't alone, but it was the greatest gift I had ever received.


End file.
